Pretty good but you need a lower tier for Eagle Eye

It's always really nice when you get Witch's Hut with Estate, Logistics or Scouting for all your side heroes.

These videoes are highly entertaining, keep it going

Regarding Wisdom skill, I think is more than essential. Without it is like, bye bye Town Portal or any other above lvl 2 magic.

Great content!! I remember I bought HOMM 3 The Restauration of Erathia back in 2000. I was 7 years old at that time and I was begging my mother to buy it for me due to the beauty of the CD cover. Fast forward 20 years and I still play HOMM 3 constantly. Back then I didn't know what a gem I just bought. I remember watching the trailer with awe and fear especially at that part when the Medusa petrified the Arch Mage. It gave me nightmares as a kid... But now it just fuels my constant nostalgy over this masterpiece of a game. HOMM 3 and AoE 2 defined my childhood. Thank you again for the great content. :D.

Leadership is a big game changer because with Expert Leadership, your hero can have multiple faction units and not have his/her morale affected

Love these videos Lexi ! Hope you make more. Take care !

I love those ranking videos! Cheers from Poland!

I'd disagree water magic being below fire magic. Water magic has some nice mass spells, with a pseudo haste in prayer and cure/dispel when the opponent casts a mass debuff on your army. Mass bless also improves your damage output. High level may not be that impactful, but as you mentioned clone is good and water walk even not being the top has some uses.

Amazing video! And extra cred That You explained for us not playing Hota What was nerfed and what was buffed!

Lexiav: Necromancy is A tier Also Lexiav: Skeletons are D tier

As someone who is getting more into HoMM III again and hasn't played competitively I really enjoy and, find this kind of content valuable. It's help all the information and tid bits you share that otherwise I'd miss out on. I would like to see how you rank each hero in hota. I understand would be a lot of work. Great video, thanks for improving my knowledge of one of my all time favorite games. I'm excited to see what you rank next!

Just discovered HOTA and your channel as well. Love your expertise at the game and your explanations as well. Nice and usefull video! Thanks!

Water magic, with mass dispell, mass cure, mass bless etc is sick. I'd put on A.

I agree with most of your rankings. Especially the 4 magic schools. I've always felt that Water needed a higher damage spell (maybe a blizzard or something similar to deep freeze in homm5) to better match the other schools (meteor shower, implosion, armageddon and chain lightning). But it has some uses, such as your mention of prayer and clone. Others include teleporting hydras behind castle walls, mass cure/dispel can be OK, and on a few rare occasions mass forgetfulness can be usable

Sad that water magic wasn't one rank higher for us to get a diagonal row of magic schools. :(

Damn, HOMM 2 & 3 were my favorite games as a kid, finally decided to get homm 3 ultimate from GOG and also slapped on the HD mod & HotA and man... having such a blast. Thanks for this list btw!

HOMM 5 made learning a serious consideration, still a meme in HOMM 3 :).

whats great about water magic is that you can clone archangels and resurrect with them infinitely

These tier lists are so fun! Do spell tier list next.

Love these tier lists! Can you do a long one for all monsters/spells?

yo lexi good shit bruh, really liked ur tier list, i would really like to see a unit tier list xd

Great vid, but I would like to see maybe in another vid on how would you fix/improve the lower skills to make them more viable. It could be an interesting discussion.

Diplomacy is a hard skip in Hota. Their nerfs were very effective.

I love how you talk to your viewers like were 3 years old :D

Those are officially called "Secondary skills" not "Adventure skills" :P (Primary skills are A, D, K, P) That said everything else is pretty accurate and this guide will be a great help for any players new to PvP. One thing to add: Diplomacy lowers the level requirement for library (2 levels per mastery), so level 4 hero with expert diplo can get sweet +2 all boost effectively doubling his early game power (even better for might heroes to increase magic skills), this is so niche though... :D Good job!

Diplomacy can be used to take the library at level 6, you forgot to mention

In Wake of Gods the First Aid and Ballistics are insanely good and are GOD tier with a specialist hero who have them as a skill. :)

You did water magic dirty.

Wisdom is S-tier. You always put yourself in a position to acquire game-breaking abilities, and Town Portal/Dimension Door/Implosion/Resurrection are essential if you're playing a difficult/competitive campaign.

I would not be placing armor on the top of the tier. Was fun to watch all that. Did not expect that :D Great video! :)

Water magic with the correct faction is at least B tier. Expert bless on early conflux play is OP

Great Vid Rytis!! Even i play Hota alot and most of it is known to me, kind of videos are really enjoyable to watch and even more when You say about Your examples like with tactics. Keep it goin

Navigation and wisdom on the same tier... i have no words

Scouting is really difficult to evaluate. It does not seem to do much, but it can save you a lot of wasted movement... and any skill granting extra movement is extremely good. While there are so many skills you want your main hero to have, that hero often does lot of spearheading into new territory as well. Hm, gotta try it out I guess. What a game, always something to experiment with...

A good, informative and an entertaining video. Would you perhaps consider doing a tier list for hero classes, heroes, spells, major/minor artefact as well?

I personally would place Air Magic into S tier too, because it has also strong early, mid and late game spells like haste, lightning bolt or chain lightning and even dimension door and fly. AND when you play against necropolis, an expert killing undead spell could be useful too.

Wisdom is really essential so I would not put it below S. You can't have TP (or DD or Fly or Armageddon) without wisdom (unless you have an artifact of the book of earth magic or other tome books that are rare). Maybe if you are playing with Barbarians on a medium map but in 95% of cases you need wisdom (long term) and its not even a question. The rest is pretty spot on and I really enjoy your content.

Diplo is solid S tier. Whenever you get it you win. And water skill is better than fire skill becouse arma or blind is still powerfull without it. Its only curse and berserk which benefit a lot from fire skill. However a lot of water magic spells are greatly enhanced with water skill.

Interesting tier list! Although I disagree with the placement of water magic as its strong spells are game changing in my opinion. Bless, cure, clone, forgetfullness and prayer, as well as water walk outside of combat, can be very powerful in their own right. And prayer is offense/armorer/haste spell all in one.

My list in order from best downwards Wisdom, Earth, Logistics, Offence, Necromancy, intelligence, Air, Armory = my perfect 8

S tier - Diplomacy, Necromacy, Air magic, Earth Magic, Logistics A Tier - Offense, Archery, Wisdom, Fire Magic, Water Magic B tier - Leardership, Luck, Tactics, Armor, Inteligence, Sorcery, Arthilery C tier - Resistance, pathfinding, Mystics, Baslistic, Estates, navigation D tier - Scholar, First Aid, Learning, Eagle Eye - I don't count HotA changes

i'm not saying Eagle Eye isn't a waste of skill slot, but it does have one competent use: a defender hero in a high priority town constantly attacked by the enemy, especially if its stronghold or fortress with only access to level 3 mage guild. having the eagle eye on your defender hero can rather quickly give him access to all the spells of the enemy teams, and with scholar you can pass them to your other heroes well.

Luck is very useful for low-attack units and/or high defence enemies. You get a 12.5% chance for a +100% base damage hit. If you spec for defence only then you can wait for luck and destroy your enemy while they do very little damage to you :)

I really like Leadership, especially together with Luck. How cool isn't it to get to move again, and then also get luck on the second go? Sometimes you get double move with luck on both as well. Really good on might heroes. Of course I'd prefer Pendant of Courage, but you can't depend on finding that. I don't like Leadership or Luck so much on their own, but by stacking them together, they make eachother even more effective.

100% Agree with you on the scouting. I use to ignore it when I was younger. Now I target items with it and I can see so much more with just basic scouting. It wins games by giving you way more information. Love witch huts with it. All delivery heroes pick it up.

Water magic is a must if you have archangels. Expert clone and you never loose a unit. Bless and cure are also very handy.

So by logic, if earth magic is s tier meaning you can't live without it, and this is predominantly for 3 spells, tp, resurrection, and implosion, all which are tier 4 or above meaning they require wisdom, then wisdom must too be s tier as without it you can't really use earth magic at all outside of slow...

Have you made a tierlist for creatures? Saw another do it, but I really like your explanations :-D

picked up 240 master genies last night with diplomacy. it was like week 3

I'd put logistics on B or C. If have town portal or fly or dimension door, logistics is almost useless. Boots, gloves can compensate well against the lack of logistics.

wait, Wisdom is only A tier? then how will you use Town portal for your S tier Earth magic ? or Resurrection? or even Animate Dead? or Dimension door from the Air pack? or Armageddon with AntiMagic? or any remotely useful level 3+ spell? I mean, it is not exciting skill. it is just necessary, more important to have than anything.

Love the points, especially on magic schools and wisdom

For all skills changed in HotA, you mentioned the change... except Scouting. So: in SoD, Scouting gives +1/+2/+3 scouting radius. In HotA, it's +1/+3/+5.

resurrection is not the only way keep ALL your units. Clone a powerstack of archangels and they will resurrect a whole lot more than expert resurrection. Clone makes water magic relevant. Also, bias towards archery is like, wtf? you literally have a crappy tier 3 spell which does exactly the same thing

Nice video, keep 'em coming! I made a guessing game out of that and guessed mostly right - yay! :D I only would have thought Water Magic and Wisdom would be a bit higher. (Wisdom cause you kinda need it for Town Portal or DD, when you don't have a scroll.) Have a good one. :)

I have to disagree with you saying water magic is as bad as it is. I mainly play fortress and having expert water magic with teleport can make wonders with MGs and CHs :). Also mass dispel, cure, bless and prayer make up for not having slow and haste. While I agree with it not being able to compete with earth and air magic it's not too farther below than fire magic imo :)

I value water magic with necro skelly army to teleport the skellies for the 3spell points and in sieges it's quite useful

Love your videos bro but Prayer and Clone are only C tier? If you are able to cast the first, it's like haste + bless + stone skin. A cloned Archangel means, no army losses and high tier unit deletion. A cloned Pitlord means more troops. A cloned Titan is almost gg. Also the ff: Cure, Bless, Summon Boat, Dispel, Weakness, Vision, Forgetfullness, Teleport, and Water Walk? Water has more utility than Fire.

Lexiav, you're awesome always :p

I don't play multiplayer, but I've used mysticism a couple times now and it feels really good. When I develop a hero so much that he doesn't need to go to town to restock I can just let him traverse the map for ages and never run out of spell points

Yeah, first list I agree with you. Town Portal game breaker hahah. I have played big maps and NO TOWN had town portal or scrolls lying around. The agony. Still won, just took forever. Scouting for me is A tier along with Logistics.

Oh, and btw, the Offense skill does not affect shooters. Just so everybody knows. + Defense is trumping Offense. By a small margin, but still.

Do you know of "HotA Magic and Skills Balance Mod". There is an idea of moving Ressurection to water magic. Nerfing meteor shower, and buffing fireball + inferno for aoe damage. IMO these changes would be good for balancing schools of magic.

Artillery and Ballistics should be combined in 1 skill to make it more interesting, maybe even add in first aid

Gotta say that the choice between Eagle Eye and First Aid isn't one I want to make, but have to :(.

I never pick tactics... because it is such a pain in the ass to use it :D

I'd switch scouting and water magic.

Why Estates is C, it's more like B imo. Perfect skill for not-main hero

It’s tough to create ranking, because at some points, you can give the sec. skill a massiv boost. Necro, e.g., in combination with the cloak of the undead King defintely is S. You can turn any creature into a skeleton and sacrafice them to get an army of Power Liches;) OC you must be lucky to get the 3 artefacts.. I mostly agree, but I‘d put Water to B, when you have Castle, because Clone is OP with Archangels^^

Why is wisdom not essential? You need it for townportal right?

Tactics secure every poormaning, it's also a strong side of it. And also i believe you might have changed some artillery/ballistic description, not quite sure though. Nice vid anyway. Ty 4 content.

Personally I love using Water Magic and Clone alongside Archangels. Then again, I'm a casual

What did I miss about the wisdom skill? Is it only essential for using the mage guilds? Or do you also need it for using higher tier spells you find on the map? Like, do you get around it by finding spell books for example?

I used to disregard water magic, but expert clone and prayer can break the game in the late game. I guess that depends on what your level 7 units are, but certainly with archangels it is insane.

I think apart from the final battle, current Misticism is two tiers above current Intelligence and I would pick it every time. But yeah, factoring the end fight in INT might be better

How come Earth Magic activated without Wisdom lol 😂😂😂

Shouldn't Navigation be top of A tier, or even low S tier. You can only get it on water maps now, right? So whenever it gets offered, that means it's a water map. In which case, it's probably more useful than Logistics? (unless there's only a little bit of water)

I love Water Magic because of Loynis.

water magic counter other schools of magics 　cure, dispel, forgetfulness. amazing defense magic for might heroes with mostly might skills

Water magic >fire magic

Nothing beats expert earth for slow and town portal and logistics. Edit: Wisdom is a must on the main hero ofc.

In Hota Resistance is replaced by Interference making it more useful against heroes. Wisdom should be in S, without wisdom there is no town portal, dd or armageddon. Town portal is essential on bigger maps.

Scouting strikes me as something that would be way more useful if Heroes 3 had fog of war.

Once my hero gets Earth, Offence and Archery i am fine.

Great tierlist! I really liked your justification. The reminder that magic schools and wisdom get offered every couple of levels is also great... I had played this game pretty much since the beginning and only learned it recently.. could have made much better choices when picking secondary skills in certain scenarios.. Also very interesting HOTA nerfs: did not know about Necro, Logistics, Intelligence.. come to think of it they all make sense to improve the game experience without drifting too far away from the original! A thing that bothers me is that too many games seem to be decided by cyclops from pickets.. is this a thing or it's jebus specific or maybe I've just seen a bunch of these games? Thanks and keep it up!

For a reason to pick up Leadership just watch the final battle in the "20IQ v 30IQ" video by TheKnownWorld.

Agree with most of this list. Maybe mystisism lower. In pvp I would ideally take: Earth Magic, Offense, Armor, Resistance, Interferance, Intelligence, Wisdom and one of Wind Magic/Water Magic/Fire Magic. If Dimension Door and fly is banned then Fire magic, if the other goes Resistance I go Water Magic. Against AI I would ideally take: Earth Magic, Wind Magic, Wisdom, Tactics, Offense, Logistic, Diplomacy and one wildcard depending on class.

He basically placed sharingan into F tier :(

I think combining Interference with Resistance skills together against mage heroes is actually a real powerhouse especially if you obtain other magic blocking artifacts.

Under certain circumstances that were possible in the past, Resistance woulda easily been one of the best skills in the game, simply because if you get enough exp with Thorgrim, get him the Amulet of Resistance, and Expert Resistance, you'd eventually become pretty much immune to magic.

Armorer: "15% WOWOWOWOW BEST SKILL IN GAME BARELY WORSE THAN OFFENCE SO GOOD!! Offence: "30% may not sound like much [actually it sounds like 30% and twice of 15% either which does sounds like a lot] but it's actually really good; slightly better than Armorer!" Reality: Armorer is, on top of being nominally half the effect, infinitely worse than Offence, since doing more damage is inherently far superior to taking less, with the advantage of first strike.

keep it up buddy u are awesome i might not agree with everything but u are far more knowledgeable than i am.

updated tier-list for the complete edition?

So many skills that could be revamped but I'm guessing it would change the game drastically to do so. Think of a hero only being able to know a limited number of spells. 5 without wisdom, 10 with basic, 20 advanced, and 30 expert. With the exception of Eagle Eye, which would be the only way to learn spells without filling up your limit. Stupid changes like this would change the game way too much and the mechanic of the wisdom limitaiton would require spells to cost resources to get (so heroes could choose what they get). Still was trying to revamp the idea of the magic skills. Overall seems like the developers just threw random skills in the game when it came to magic. The magic school skills themselves are a bit lazy too if you think about it. Would really like if the game reworked its magic system somehow because the might gameplay is a lot more fun if you look at it. The best spells are might affliction as well. (Slow is better than Blind or Berserk for example). Always neat to think of the potential of twnety year old games.

Very accurate. Agreed with almost every one

Expert cure and expert prayer should put water magic in B tier, imho. Also, expert dispell detonates all the landmines on a tower town, which is super cool and useful since your units will literally walk through 3 or 4 of them if you aren't careful. Edit: Also, Loynis is my favorite hero, so I'm a tad biased, lol.

So I need to pick first aid, learning, eagle eye, sorcery, ballistics, scholar, artillery and estates, check.

Great video. Almost all skills in HoMM3 are more or less valuable. But Sorcery, First Aid, Learning and Eagle Eye are just pathetic. All my life i wandered how to change those to make them good but not OP immediately: 1.Sorcery: +10/15/20% to Spell EFFECTIVENESS, so it will effect spells like: Res, AD, Cure, Hypnosis witch are HP based, and also increase summons. 2.First Aid: +50/75/100 REGENARATION HP to ALL friendly units, basically like Potion of Life but with no extra HP 3. Learning: You can reroll skills and stats ONE/TWO/TREE TIMES every lvlup, so early game you can build your hero better, and late game you can pick more important stats for you like Knowledge or Spell Power. 4. Eagle Eye: I think this skill must stay as it is just for warning of making BAD skills for future.

Let's be clear here, no banned skill should have a place on any tier so Diplomacy should be Omega tier or below!